Author Topic: Views versus Sales Ratio (Read 1970 times)

CD123 · « **on:** January 08, 2011, 15:39 »

Know it is a tough question, but what is the average views per sale you get (this is now of course in the nice sites which give you that stats).
I am a bit disgruntled. Have about 245 pics on CanStock (loaded over the past 1 and a half month) - have 4000 views and only 2 sales. Is this normal or is my pics not good enough (yet all the views)?
PS: I notice that the same issue was raised on this site in 2007 (however CanStockPhoto is now no. 7 on the earnings list....)?

qwerty · « **Reply #1 on:** January 08, 2011, 20:26 »

no point comparing views between portfolios. Some different subjects get more clicks through by people just browsing not really looking to buy. Also some of the agencies count views differently. Some you have to be logged in as a buyer, some other log a view everytime a web crawler indexes for searches etc.

Canstock is slow for sales compared to other agencies.

If you want to measure how good your portfolio is I would compare details on Istock or Dreamstime against your peers where you can get some useful data.

PaulieWalnuts · « **Reply #2 on:** January 08, 2011, 20:31 »

No straight answer on this.

I don't submit to Canstock but it's not known to be a high earner so that probably has a lot to do with it.

In general on top tier sites, I'd say the View/Download ratio for most people probably looks close to this

5/1 - Excellent performer
10/1 - Good performer
20/1 - Decent performer
40/1 - Fair performer

Anything beyond 40/1 seems pretty poor. A lot of looking and not a lot of buying. Would seem to indicate something is wrong with the photo's concept, composition, etc.

Vonkara · « **Reply #3 on:** January 08, 2011, 20:38 »

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on January 08, 2011, 20:31

No straight answer on this.

I don't submit to Canstock but it's not known to be a high earner so that probably has a lot to do with it.

In general on top tier sites, I'd say the View/Download ratio for most people probably looks close to this

5/1 - Excellent performer
10/1 - Good performer
20/1 - Decent performer
40/1 - Fair performer

Anything beyond 40/1 seems pretty poor. A lot of looking and not a lot of buying. Would seem to indicate something is wrong with the photo's concept, composition, etc.

Exactly my situation on Istock. This is well calculated to me. Though 5/1 is very rare for everyone, I'm pretty sure

leaf · « **Reply #4 on:** January 09, 2011, 06:08 »

If you check out the iStock rank list
http://www.microstockgroup.com/?action=rank&site=IS

Then look at the Downloads/Image ratio and see how varied they are. They are going to be just as varied for views/download .. like the others have said it is pretty hard to compare.

Elenathewise · « **Reply #5 on:** January 09, 2011, 13:33 »

I wouldn't pay too much attention to numberr of veiws. It's sales that matter:) as people already mentioned here, u can't really correlate number of veiws with number of sales. Some of my files have a ratio of 1:1, some 1:540. U may be getting views from browsers that never intend to buy anything, so it's not a good measure of anything.

madelaide · « **Reply #6 on:** January 09, 2011, 14:03 »

Checking my best-sellers at IS, they vary basically from 20:1 to 100:1. A few images have a lower ratio.

luissantos84 · « **Reply #7 on:** January 09, 2011, 15:36 »

Quote from: leaf on January 09, 2011, 06:08

If you check out the iStock rank list
http://www.microstockgroup.com/?action=rank&site=IS

Then look at the Downloads/Image ratio and see how varied they are. They are going to be just as varied for views/download .. like the others have said it is pretty hard to compare.

sorry to bother you but this rank feature is always working very bad (at least for me) one day I can see me there on bold but now I cannot see myself.. do you imagine what´s wrong?

ShadySue · « **Reply #8 on:** January 11, 2011, 05:19 »

What everyone says. Plus a lot of low sellers are probably the sort of nice photos that 'casual browsers' who would never buy like to have a look at, whereas lots of the high sellers aren't really of interest to any but the buyers (business shots etc.)
I hadn't thought of spider bots counting as a view. Anyone know if that's the case on iStock? Could explain a lot if so! E.g. I haven't had a sale since Saturday, but as it happened I fetched stats via DM before I went to bed and then again now and have had 318 files viewed in 9 (overnight, GMT) hours (and no sales) but noticed a lot of views whizzing through for my Christmas and Chanukah files (which are linked on iStock, so would presumably spider out).